Fran, the ledge, and sailing away…

I thought I knew exactly what I was going to write today but things happen, changing everything, tumblers clunking into place; and at once another door opens, shuts before you, or closes behind you.

Well known restaurant owners disappear, things become suitably camouflaged, trains are caught.

It’s behind you.

There are people who say that everything happens for a reason. Who knows; they may even believe it. Personally though, I don’t sign up to that. I (on the other hand) think that everything is pretty much random, happening to us because it can and not because there is some plan. No, if there is a Supreme-Being working it all out somewhere then he’s either over-promoted or sleeping off a skin-full in some great cosmic ditch.

But enough. There’s no way to camouflage bad news and today was a bad news day. Not my bad news exactly, but bad nevertheless and close enough to home to have its rippling impact. Bad enough to make me remember the ledge we’re all standing on. That ledge, the one that with the slightest change of breeze or tremble can so easily send us toppling off and over and out into whatever.

Never to return.

I heard of the death of an old colleague of mine today; Fran Weber, part of a past that for me has been gone for a while now, but still here in my mind. He finally fell off the ledge that he’d been standing on so bravely for so long.

Funny thing is I’d been thinking a lot about Fran recently, just wondering. Strange, because although I knew Fran as a colleague, I can’t say I knew him very well as a person. There from almost the start, I’d meet up with him when I went across to the US, but only as part of a group. Sometimes I didn’t see him at all. Sometimes I didn’t even seek him out. My loss - I know that now.

He left a big impact when I did meet up with him though. I spent a few days in Florida with Fran and some others once. We went to Cape Canaveral. I remember Fran laughing on the bus, telling jokes, exchanging tall tales. Fran was like that - big guy, big personality, big smile, and a victim of the big ‘C’.

My old friend Eric swore by Fran, seeing in him all the potential that proved to be so true. And Eric was a hard man to impress (I know, I never managed it), and yes, Eric’s opinion was good enough for me.

Looking at Fran the man, you’d never have known that he had cancer, at least I wouldn’t if I hadn’t have been told. He was one of those men that always seemed so well, on top of everything, so up for a joke or a beer, a golden boy in the best possible sense. A Pindar Guy if ever there was one - so much more than those others who sidled along after Pindar was no more. Old Eric would have cut off their toes and served them all for tea I think.

No, you’d never have known that Fran was up on that ledge with the rest of us, just waiting to fall, trying so hard not to - and closer to that edge than most. Some might have jumped. But not Fran, no I know that Fran would never have jumped.

Yes, if I was many miles from here I’d be sailing in an open boat on the sea. Instead I’m on this window ledge with the whole world below.

If you lie down in the boat, you can feel it bobbing up and down. Feel the sides going up and down as you lie there. And you can look up at the sky and see all the seagulls flying around up high, calling to one another.

You can hear the waves gently slapping against the side of the boat as you lie in the bottom of it, looking up at the sky. The boat gently swaying from side to side, a bit like you are being rocked. Rocked like a baby in a cradle, or maybe as though you’re in a hammock. Gently being rocked to sleep……

Goodbye Fran. Here’s hoping, that wherever you’re sailing to, they serve beer.